4 George MacDonald first editions are documented on this shelf, from Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (1858) to The Princess and Curdie (1883) across 3 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that George MacDonald title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.
Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a George MacDonald copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.
- Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women — 1858 · Smith, Elder & Co.London: Smith, Elder and Co., 65 Cornhill, 1858; published 28 October 1858; octavo, pp. [1-4] [1] 2-323 [324: blank]. Original decorated dark green pebbled cloth, front and rear panels stamped in blind, spine panel stamped in gold, cream endpapers, all edges untrimmed; more than one binding variant exists — dealers refer copies to Wolff's copy I / copy II, and a blind-stamped olive-green cloth is also recorded.…. UK only for precedence: Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1858 is the true first. The first American edition did not appear until Loring, Boston, in 1870 — twelve years later — so no simultaneous-issue question arises and the census claim is confirmed. The real hazard here is 'first thus' traps, which are numerous: the 1905 Arthur C. Fifield first Hughes-illustrated edition (thirty-three new Arthur Hughes…. No book-club edition applies — an 1858 London novel predates the book-club era by decades. Reprint tells are therefore imprint-based: any copy naming Loring, Fifield, Dent/Everyman, Daldy Isbister, Gollancz or a modern press is a reprint or 'first thus', not the Smith, Elder sheets. The target is a Smith, Elder title page dated 1858 in blind-stamped dark green pebbled cloth with the September 1858 catalogue at….
- At the Back of the North Wind — 1871 · Strahan & Co.First book publication followed serialization in the children's magazine Good Words for the Young (November 1868-October 1870). The first edition is octavo, collating viii, 378pp plus 13pp of publisher's catalogue, with 76 wood-engraved illustrations by the Dalziel Brothers after Arthur Hughes worked into the text. Original cloth is recorded in at least two states: a terracotta cloth bound by Burn & Co. of….
- The Princess and the Goblin — 1872 · Strahan & Co.Serialized in Good Words for the Young from November 1870 to June 1871, then issued by Strahan in book form in December 1871 with a title page dated 1872. The first-edition, first-issue binding carries the publisher's name at the foot of the spine and a crescent moon and flaming torch stamped in gilt outside the circular pictorial design on the front cover; the book is bound in blue cloth with an elaborate gilt….
- The Princess and Curdie — 1883 · Chatto and WindusSequel to The Princess and the Goblin, illustrated in line by James Allen rather than by Arthur Hughes, who had illustrated the first book. The first edition is octavo, collating vi, 255pp with a frontispiece and 10 plates, bound in original green pictorial cloth with gilt titling, patterned endpapers, and all edges stained red. First-edition copies include a 32-page publisher's catalogue, dated July 1882, bound…. MacDonald's British publisher, Chatto and Windus, holds priority; the J. B. Lippincott (Philadelphia) edition issued the same year is catalogued by dealers as the 'first American edition' rather than the true first.
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